Lovecraftian Character Traits I (Random Table/Cthulhoid Games)

Lovecraftian Character Traits I (D30)

1. Wealthy beyond the necessity of a commercial life. (Multiply starting money by 10.)
2. Temperamentally unfitted for formal studies or social recreations. (Shift 1 point from Wisdom and/or 1 point Charisma to Intelligence.)
3. Former inmate of an asylum, sanitarium, or rest home. (All reaction rolls at -2, but you're not sure why...)
4. Spent youth and early adolescence wallowing in ancient and little known books. (Gain Obscure/Esoteric Trivia as a bonus skill.)
5. Ancestral home was destroyed by a fire started during a midnight storm. (-1 on all Saves versus electrical/fire damage.)
6. Related, distantly, to a great family of a distant land who have such a notorious, sinister reputation that you dare not reveal the connection openly. (Chaotic entities have a +1 reaction to your presence.)
7. You hear voices. They belong to somebody. Or something. But you're afraid to find out.
8. The invisible friend of your childhood is real. Every personal hit point you permanently sacrifice to them brings them one step closer to becoming more tangible and able to affect things in the material world. (Every six hit points given over to this entity allows it to roll for one more Attribute beginning with Intelligence. It must successfully acquire Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma and Dexterity before it can begin on Constitution and Strength. Once it gains the sixth attribute, it manifests as a 6HD Chaotic creature independent of the character who fed it. There is a base 25% chance that this is a Horla.)
9. Roamed the fields and groves of the local region growing up. (30% chance to know a few things about sites of interest within 60 miles of home.)
10. Monomaniac. You are driven to accomplish one very important, very private task. Everything you do is related to this task, but you cannot, must not discuss it with any other soul for they will not understand and worse, they might attempt to dissuade, distract or deter you from this nigh unto sacred personal quest.
11. Grew up with an attic full of old books. (Know and can cast 1d4 spells, no matter class/race restrictions.)
12. As a baby, you were found inside a crypt, peacefully sleeping within a crumbling casket. No one talked about this very much while you were growing up as the family that adopted you spent a good deal of money to keep things quiet.
13. Sly, stealthy slanders have surrounded you all your life. (All hirelings and hench-folk have a -2 penalty to loyalty no matter what you do. And they tend to gossip behind your back.)
14. Insomniac given to reading disturbing passages from moldering tomes out loud accompanied by sly comments and witticisms, often to the chagrin and horror of their neighbors or servants.
15. You detest single-syllable words and prefer to express yourself with more colorful and mellifluous terms that more fully encompass and better express your thoughts.
16. Cold-blooded; you might as well have been born a reptile. In fact, roll a D20; a result of 20 means that you have some sort of reptilian taint in your bloodline.
17. Abstemious, you eat very little and do not drink...wine. (Can subsist on half rations at no penalty.)
18. You often recall curious passages and strange quotations from books only you've ever heard of or read in a dream. (10% chance of learning a new spell every two weeks.)
19. Strange obsession. You gain a +2 bonus to one skill, Save, or attack and -2 on all other skills, one other Save, or any attack with a different weapon.
20. Sickly childhood; drop one point from CON and apply it to INT or WIS or CHAR instead.
21. You have a map that purports to lead to your ancestral home, but it is scrawled half-illegibly on a wadded-up piece of badly made parchment made from an Unseen Beast and covered in a script from some language you cannot identify. There is blood on the map. Maybe it's not a good thing to talk about in front of strangers.
22. Your starting money is doubled, only it's in the form of barnacle-encrusted gold coins that your mother claims were recovered from a shipwreck by your uncle before his unfortunate encounter with a shark.
23. You are a dreamer. Each night you must make a Save or find yourself caught-up in an adventure exploring some region of the dreamscape. Sometimes you learn interesting things, other times you might run afoul of nasty things. Some of those things might follow you back to your body...
24. Beloved of your ancestors, you need to make a Save whenever you fall below 6 hit points or your body will be taken over by the displaced mind of one of your predecessors. You can fight to get your body back, but without a good exorcism or some such, it's going to get crowded in there...
25. You grew up sleeping in a coffin. It's a little weird, but otherwise doesn't really give you any powers, just a slightly creepy personal revelation that carries a -4 penalty to reaction rolls once it does get revealed.
26. When you concentrate while standing or sitting very, very still, you can see into resonant levels of reality, however for every ten minutes you spend observing the splendors and wonders of this otherwise invisible world around us all, you must make a Save or be noticed by something native to this strata of existence. See the Resonant Encounters Table.
27. One of your ancestors used to have a familiar. Congratulations, it now wants to serve you, just like in the old days. See Alternative Familiars Table.
28. You can perform the Voorish Sign up to three times in a given day, but you have no idea why or how.
29. When you remain within a cooler area you regain hit points at double the usual amount. However you take double damage from fire/heat attacks, and heal at half normal rate in hot environments.
30. You are unsure of the reality of the past events in your life, even though you keep a journal or diary. You also have the sneaking suspicion that your entries change when you aren't looking.